1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for writing a pattern by irradiating a substrate with a modulated light beam.
2. Description of the Background Art
Conventionally well known is an apparatus for writing a pattern on a printed circuit board on which a resist film is formed, by modulating a laser beam and emitting it to the board. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid Open Gazette No. 2001-264654 discloses a laser writing apparatus that corrects scan control of laser beams in accordance with expansion or contraction of a printed circuit board to perform writing without the effect of expansion or contraction.
When the pattern writing apparatus for performing pattern writing with light is applied to writing on a semiconductor substrate, the amount of data which are generated for pattern writing is so large and it takes too much time to generate the data.
Further, when only one block of pattern (hereinafter, referred to as xe2x80x9cpattern blockxe2x80x9d) which is relatively coarse is written on a whole substrate, like in the case of a printed circuit board, an appropriate pattern can be written by uniformly expanding or contracting the pattern block in accordance with expansion or contraction of the substrate, but when a number of very fine pattern blocks are written, like in the case of a semiconductor substrate, if all the pattern blocks are uniformly expanded or contracted, there is a possibility that microscopic deviation may be caused in some of the very fine patterns by the effect of discretization in rasterization.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a technique for appropriately and easily writing a number of very fine pattern blocks on a substrate.
The present invention is intended for a pattern writing apparatus for performing pattern writing by irradiating a substrate with a light beam. The pattern writing apparatus comprises a light beam emission part for emitting a modulated light beam, a scanning mechanism for scanning an irradiation point of a light beam from the light beam emission part on a substrate, a writing data generation part for generating writing data, a writing control part for writing an array of a plurality of pattern blocks on a substrate by controlling the light beam emission part and the scanning mechanism on the basis of writing data, and a detector for detecting expansion or contraction of a substrate, and in the pattern writing apparatus, the writing data generation part generates writing data in which a width of each gap between adjacent ones of pattern blocks is changed on the basis of a detection result from the detector while a width of each of the plurality of pattern blocks is maintained in at least one direction.
According to an aspect of the present invention, the writing data generation part generates writing data in which widths of each gap between adjacent ones of pattern blocks are changed while widths of each of the plurality of pattern blocks are maintained in two directions orthogonal to each other.
It is thereby possible to appropriately write the pattern blocks without complicate control.
According to one preferred embodiment of the present invention, the scanning mechanism scans an irradiation point of a light beam in a main scan direction and a subscan direction and writing of stripe regions each extending in the subscan direction is repeated in the main scan direction, each unit region includes one of the plurality of pattern blocks, every edge on an end in the main scan direction of an unit region coincides with an edge of one of the stripe regions, and the writing data generation part divides each unit region into a plurality of divided regions each having a predetermined width in the main scan direction to obtain partial writing data on each of the plurality of divided regions.
Further, the writing data generation part corrects the partial writing data to data in which a width of a non-pattern region on an end in the subscan direction is changed on the basis of the detection result, and/or corrects partial writing data corresponding to a divided region on an end in the main scan direction to data in which a width of a non-pattern region on an end in the main scan direction is changed on the basis of the detection result.
It is thereby reduce the amount of computation for generating writing data.
The present invention is also intended for a pattern writing method for performing pattern writing by irradiating a substrate with a light beam, and a substrate on which a pattern is written by this pattern writing method.
These and other objects, features, aspects and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description of the present invention when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.